Summer of Night

THIRTY-SIX

Mr. Dennis Ashley-Montague sat in the back of his black limousine and stared at the passing cornfields and crossroads towns during the hour drive to Elm Haven. Tyler, his head butler, chauffeur, and bodyguard, did not speak, and Mr. Ashley-Montague saw no reason to break the silence. The limousine's tinted windows always imparted a certain element of storm light to the view, so Mr. Ashley-Montague did not take undue notice of the dark skies and sickly light that lay over the forests and fields and rivers like a rotting curtain on the verge of opening.

Elm Haven's Main Street was emptier than usual, even for a Saturday night, and when Mr. Ashley-Montague stepped out of the limousine at Bandstand Park, the darkness overhead was immediately perceptible. Instead of the usual scores of families waiting patiently on the grass, only a few faces watched Tyler carry the massive projector from the limousine's trunk to the bandstand. A handful of other trucks and cars pulled in to park diagonally while Tyler was arranging the speakers and other equipment, but overall the turnout was one of the lowest in the nineteen years that the Ashley-Montagues had been providing this free Saturday-evening entertainment for the dying little town.

Dennis Ashley-Montague returned to the backseat of the limousine, locked the doors, and poured a tall glass of Glenli-vet unblended Scotch from the bar set into the soundproofed partition behind the driver. He had considered not coming tonight-not allowing any more Free Shows-but the tradition ran deep and his sense of being the village squire to this assortment of inbred bumpkins and rednecks served a certain perverse purpose in his life.

And he wanted to speak to the boys.

He had seen them at previous Free Shows over the years; their grimy little faces watching the movie as if it were some bright miracle, their cheeks protruding with gum and popcorn . . . but he had never really looked at one until that fat boy-the one whose friend said he had been killed-had questioned him on the bandstand over a month earlier. Then that amazing little fellow who had shown up at Mr. Ashley-Montague's front door ... he had actually had the temerity to steal a leatherbound copy of Crowley's translation of The Book of the Law. Mr. Ashley-Montague saw nothing in that book that could help the boys if his grandfather's Stele of Revealing were actually awakening from its long slumber. Mr. Ashley-Montague knew of nothing that could help any of them if that were the case, himself included.

The millionaire finished his drink and strolled back to the bandstand, where Tyler had finished his final arrangements. It was not yet eight-thirty in the evening . . . usually the twilight would linger another thirty minutes in these latitudes . . . but the clouds had brought night early.

Mr. Ashley-Montague felt a great sense of claustrophobia seize him: from where he stood the town seemed sealed in by eight-foot-tall corn-to the south beyond the ruins of his ancestral mansion, to the north four long blocks up the dark tunnel of Broad Avenue, west only a few hundred yards to where the Hard Road doglegged to the north, and east down the silent gauntlet of Main Street with its dark shops. The timer had not yet turned on the streetlights.

Mr. Ashley-Montague did not see the boys he was looking for. He saw Charles Sperling, the bratty son of that Sperling man who had had the sheer temerity to approach Mr. Ashley-Montague for a loan for some business venture, and next to him the flat-faced, overly muscled Taylor boy-his grandfather had received capital injections from Dennis Ashley-Montague's grandfather in exchange for some favors of forgetfulness at the time of the Scandal.

But few other children, and not many families tonight. Perhaps they were worried that a tornado was coming.

Mr. Ashley-Montague checked the darkening yellow sky and realized that no birds were making a racket as they usually did in the tall trees here at sunset. There was no insect noise whatsoever. No breeze moved the branches, and even the darkness had a yellowish tinge to it.

The millionaire lighted a cigarette, rested on the railing of the bandstand, and considered where he would take cover if the sirens suddenly warned of an approaching tornado. There were no homes open to him here and he would not go to the ruins of the mansion, despite the wine cellar still intact there, since the workmen clearing the place had found the suspicious tunnels burrowed through solid rock there last fall.

No, Mr. Ashley-Montague decided, if there were solid warning of a tornado or serious storm, he would simply get back in the limousine and have Tyler drive him home. Tornadoes might smash little towns like Elm Haven, but they did not bother with luxury vehicles on the highway, and there was no record of one ever touching down along Grand View Drive.

He nodded to Tyler and the other man cued up the first cartoon and switched on the projector lamp. There was a smattering of halfhearted applause from the few people on their benches and blankets. Tom and Jerry began chasing each other around a primary-colored house while Mr. Ashley-

Montague smoked another cigarette and watched the skies south of town.

"Tornado, do you think?" said Dale as they stood on the porch of his house and looked down Second Avenue. Few cars passed on the Hard Road and those that did had their lights on and were going slowly.

"I don't know," said Mike. They'd all seen tornado weather before-it was the bane of the Midwest and the one form of weather most of their parents feared-but those bruise-black clouds to the south had seemed to be building for days now. The sky there seemed like a negative emulsion of daytime, the trees and rooftops illuminated by the last of a yellow light while the sky was like the opening to a black abyss. A faint ripple of greenish light along the horizon of cornstalks suggested lightning, but there were no actual flashes as such, no visible lightning strokes, only an occasional surge of green-white phosphoresence that got the old-timers at the store talking about chain lightning and ball lightning and other phenomena that they knew nothing about.

Mike lifted the walkie-talkie and keyed transmit. Two clicks came back, showing that Kevin was listening.

"Can you talk?" Mike said softly into the radio, not playing around with codes or call signs.

"Yeah," responded Kevin's voice. Even though the other boy was less than a hundred feet away in the ranch house next door, the transmission was broken up by static and hissing. It was as if the atmosphere was boiling on some plane they couldn't see.

"We're going to go inside and turn in," said Mike. "Unless you guys want to go down to the Free Show."

"Ha ha," came Harlen's voice. Mike could just imagine the smaller boy grabbing the radio.

"You guys all tucked in over there?" asked Dale, leaning close to Mike's walkie-talkie.

"Very funny," said Harlen. "We're watching Grum-belly's TV in the basement. The bad guys just kidnapped Miss Kitty."

Dale grinned. "They kidnap Miss Kitty every week. I think Matt should just let them have her.''

Kevin's voice came back, low and tense. "I have the key for the morning."

Mike sighed. "Roger that. You guys have pleasant dreams tonight . . . but make sure you've got fresh batteries and leave the line open."

"Roger" was Kev's laconic reply. The static crackled and popped.

The three boys went upstairs to Dale and Lawrence's bedroom. Mrs. Stewart had set up an extra cot under the south window; she had been very understanding that Mike was upset after the previous day's terrible accident with Father Cavanaugh. She didn't mind a bit if Mike slept over. Mr. Stewart was going to be home early Sunday afternoon and perhaps all of them could go on a picnic down along the Spoon or Illinois rivers.

They got into their pajamas. They would have preferred staying dressed this night, but Dale's mom would surely check in on them and they didn't want any problems. They kept their clothes laid out, and Dale set the small alarm clock for four forty-five. He noticed that his hand was shaking slightly as he wound the clock.

They lay on their beds, Mike on his cot, reading comics and talking about everything except what they were thinking about.

"I wish we could've gone to the Free Show," Lawrence said during a lull in the talk about the Chicago Cubs. "That new Vincent Price movie's playing-The House ofUsser."

"House of Usher,''' said Dale. "It's from an Edgar Allan Poe story. Remember when I read you the 'Masque of the Red Death' last Halloween?" Dale felt a strange pang of sorrow and it took him a moment to realize that it had been Duane who had told him about the wonderful Poe stories and poems. He looked at his nightstand, where Duane's notebooks were carefully banded together. Downstairs, the phone rang twice. They could hear the muffled tones of Dale's mom answering it.

"Whatever," said Lawrence, putting his hands behind his head on the pillow. His pajamas showed little cowboys on rearing Palominos. "I just wish we could see the movie." Mike set down his Batman comic. He was wearing nondescript blue pajama bottoms with his t-shirt. "You don't want to walk home in the dark, do you? Your mom didn't want to go because of the storm, and I don't think it's a great night to be wandering the streets."

There came the sound of footsteps on the stairs and Mike glanced toward his duffel bag, but Dale said, "It's mom."

She stood in the doorway, attractive in her soft white summer dress.''That was Aunt Lena. Uncle Henry's hurt his back again . . . trying to move some stumps out of that back pasture . . . and now he can't unbend at all. Dr. Viskes has prescribed some painkillers, but you know how Lena hates to drive. She wonders if I could bring the pills out."

Dale sat up in bed. "The pharmacy's closed."

"I called Mr. Aikins. He'll go down and open it up to fill the prescription." She glanced out the window at the ripple of lightning still outlining trees and homes to the south. "I'm not sure I want to leave you guys here with a storm coming. Do you want to come along?"

Dale started to speak, then looked at Mike, who nodded at the walkie-talkie on the floor next to him. Dale understood: if they went out to Uncle Henry's, they'd be out of touch with Kevin and Harlen. They'd promised.

"Uh-uh," said Dale. "We'll be OK here."

His mother looked out at the storm-tinged darkness. "You're sure?"

Dale grinned and waved a comic. "Sure . . . we've got snacks and pop and comics . . . what more could we want?"

She smiled. "All right. I'll just be gone twenty minutes or so. Call the farm if you need me." She glanced at her watch. "It's almost eleven. Be thinking about putting out the lights in a few minutes."

They listened to her bustle around downstairs, the back door slamming, and the old car starting up. Dale stood at the window to watch it go down Second toward the downtown.

"I don't like this too much," said Mike.

Dale shrugged. "You think the bell or whatever it is disguised itself as a stump to hurt Uncle Henry's back? You think it's all part of a plan?"

"I just don't like it." Mike stood and got into his sneakers. "I think we'd better lock the doors downstairs."

Dale paused. It was an odd thought-they only locked the doors when they were going away on vacation or something. "Yeah," he said at last. "I'll go down and do it."

"You stay here," said Mike, nodding toward Lawrence, who was too engrossed in his comic book to notice. "I'll be right back." He lifted his duffel bag and padded across the landing and down the stairs. Dale strained to hear the frontdoor bolt being slid shut, the footsteps down the hall to the kitchen. They'd have to watch for their mom's return so they could get downstairs to unlock everything before she got to the back door.

Dale lay back in bed, seeing the silent lightning out the south window and the shadows of leaves in the big elm out the north window to his right.

"Hey, look at this!" laughed Lawrence. He was reading the Uncle Scrooge comic-his favorite reading matter in all the world-and something in the tale of Viking gold had tickled him. He held the page out toward Dale.

Dale was actually sleepy; he reached for the comic and missed. It fluttered to the floor.

"I've got it," said Lawrence, reaching down between the beds.

The white hand and arm shot from beneath the bed and grabbed Lawrence's wrist.

"Hey!" said Lawrence and was instantly jerked off the bed, bedclothes flying. He landed on the floor with a thump. The white arm began dragging him under the bed.

Dale didn't have time to shout. He grabbed his brother's legs and tried to hold on. The pull was inexorable; Dale was coming off his own bed, sheets and spread bunching around his knees.

Lawrence screamed just as his head went under his bed; then his shoulders were pulled in. Dale tried to hang on, tried to pull his brother back up, but it was as if there were four or five adults pulling from under the bed and there was no letup on the pressure. He was afraid that if he didn't quit pulling so hard, Lawrence would be torn in half.

Taking a deep breath, Dale jumped down between the beds, kicking his own bed away, lifting the dust cover that their mom had insisted on sticking on Lawrence's bed over the boy's protests that it was sissy.

There was a darkness under there ... not a normal darkness, but a blackness deeper than the impenetrable storm clouds along the southern horizon. It was an ink-spilled-on-black-velvet blackness under there, covering the floorboards and broiling like a black fog. Two massive white arms came out of that blackness and stuffed Lawrence into the hole like a lumberjack feeding a small log to the sawblade. Lawrence screamed again, but the cry was cut off abruptly as his head disappeared into the round blackness within blackness. His shoulders followed.

Dale grabbed at his brother's ankles again, but the white hands were relentless. Slowly, kicking and writhing but silent, Lawrence was pulled under the bed.

"Mike!" screamed Dale, his voice shrill. "Get up here! Hurry!" He was cursing himself for not grabbing his own duffel bag on the other side of the bed ... the shotgun, the squirt guns ... no, there wouldn't have been time. Lawrence would be gone.

He was almost gone as it was. Only his legs protruded from the blackness.

Jesus, Jesus, he's being pulled into the floor! Maybe it's just eating him up as he goes! But the legs were still kicking; his brother was still alive.

"Mike!"

Dale felt the blackness begin to curl around him then, tendrils and tentacles of darkness thicker and colder than a winter fog. Where the tendrils touched, Dale's legs and ankles prickled as if they had been touched by dry ice. "Mike!"

One of the white hands released itself from the chore of feeding Lawrence to the darkness and grabbed at Dale's face. The fingers were at least ten inches long.

Dale lurched backward, lost his grip on Lawrence's ankles, and watched as the last of his brother was fed to the darkness. Then there was nothing under the bed but the black fog, receding on itself now, the impossibly long fingers sliding backward and down like the hands of a sewer worker lowering himself into a manhole.

Dale threw himself under the bed, reaching into the darkness, groping for his brother even as he felt his hands and forearms go numb in the terrible chill, even as the blackness folded on itself, tendrils pulling in like a movie of some ebony blossom folding up for night, run at high speed . . . and then there was only the perfect circle of darkness-a hole! Dale could feel emptiness where the solid floor should be!-and then he tugged his hands back as that circle contracted all too quickly, snapping shut like a steel trap that would have taken Dale's fingers off in an instant. . . .

"What?" cried Mike, exploding into the room with his bag in one hand and the long-barreled squirrel gun in the other.

Dale was on his feet, sobbing but trying not to, pointing and babbling.

Mike dropped to his knees, rattled the barrel of the small shotgun across the solid floorboards. Dale dropped to his knees and elbows and pounded that floor with his fists. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" There was nothing down there but boards and dust bunnies and Lawrence's dropped Uncle Scrooge comic.

A scream echoed up from the basement.

"Lawrence!" shouted Dale, running for the landing.

"Just a second! Just a second!" shouted Mike, holding him back until he could retrieve Dale's duffel bag and the radio. "Put the damn Savage together."

"We can't wait. . .Lawrence. . ." gasped Dale between sobs, tugging to get free. Another scream echoed from the basement, farther away this time.

Mike dropped the squirrel gun on the bed and shook Dale with both hands. "Assemble ... the ... Savage! They want you to go down there with no weapon. They want you to panic. Think!"

Dale was shaking as he put the shotgun together, locking the barrel in the stock. Mike stuck two loaded squirt guns in his belt, tossed the box of .410 shells to Dale, slung the walkie-talkie over his shoulder, and said, "OK, let's go down there."

The screams had stopped.

They pounded down the stairs, through the dark hall, across the kitchen, and through the inner door to the basement stairs.